This invention is directed to a ribbon machine capable of feeding a ribbon into a ribbon cassette wherein the cassette is any one of a variety of types of styles of different cassettes manufactured by different manufacturers and differing structurally from one another. The ribbon can be fed either from the cassette around a re-inking apparatus and back to the cassette or a replacement ribbon can be fed into the cassette.
A variety of machines use ribbon cassettes to supply a continuous inked ribbon to a printing head. Such machines include printers for calculaters, computers and other related machines wherein a graphic or written printout is desirable. The ribbons utilized with these machines can either be a continuous loop or a continuous mobius loop. In any event, the ribbon loop is stored in a cassette and a small section of this loop is located outside of the cassette between a discharge opening and a feed opening on the cassette. In use, the ribbon circulates out of the cassette past the appropriate printing head or the like and is re-inserted into the cassette.
The ribbons used in the above noted cassettes are generally of a fabric material which retains a quantity of printing ink in them. After one or more passes past a printing head the quantity of ink in the ribbon can be depleted to the point wherein the legibility of the printed matter deteriorates. Instead of destroying the cassette and its ribbon, re-inking machines have been developed to re-ink the ribbon.
Unfortunately, manufacturers of different machines which utilize the cassette type ribbons discussed above have made no attempt to standardize either the ribbons or the cassettes. The majority of the cassettes currently found in the marketplace incorporate an internal rewind sprocket or knurled wheel. However, one major manufacturer utilizes a cassette which requires a rewind wheel which is located outside of the cassette. There are cassettes wherein the rewind wheels are located on the right hand side of the cassette and those where they are located on the left hand side, and further some of the rewind wheels are driven clockwise while some are driven counterclockwise.
Certain re-inking machines have been described such as that in U.S. Pat. No. 4,126,715. Unfortunately re-inking machines such as those described in this patent are directed to utilization of only one type of cassette or cartridge. A cassette differing from the exact cassette which the above noted re-inking machine is set up for cannot be re-inked on this machine. For any user who has two ribbon using machines which utilize different types of cassettes the above noted machine is only useful to re-ink one type of cassette.